STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday March 19

Source: du

STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday March 19, 2010

Bush Administration Officials Convicted = 2
Name(s): David Safavian, James Fondren

Bush Administration Officials Charged = 1
Name(s): Richard Lopez Razo

Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = 11

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON March 18, 2010

Dow... 10,779.17 +45.50 (+0.42%)
Nasdaq... 2,391.28 +2.19 (+0.09%)
S&P 500... 1,165.82 -0.39 (-0.03%)
Gold future... 1,125 +1.10 (+0.10%)
10-Yr Bond... 3.68 +0.04 (+1.07%)
30-Year Bond 4.60 +0.03 (+0.66%)

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Market Conditions During Trading Hours

GOLD, EURO, YEN, Loonie, Silver and US$

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This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.

Read more: du

:woohoo: :hi:

:donut: :donut: :donut:

I also hope you like the new charts. These were tough to find. I will add more as appropriate. Most financial sites are moving to representing data that is in javascript form - which is impossible to post here at DU due to limits of the software that drives these message windows.

:hi:

Don't know if you saw my post on yesterday's thread, but I suggested that you might want to run this by elad, to see if he has any ideas... :hi:

I would really love to have a javascript window, maybe a widget, that streams market data in real time. There are other really cool features that will boost the accessibility and content of this thread. Many sites are running flash-based charts that will allow simple analysis functionality inside the window. The code is very similar to that used in the political videos forum for Youtube features.

So this may be possible. This sounds incredibly cool and elad may have a solution. Good luck! :hi:

Glad you were able to find something that works here.

Like I said - it was not easy. Most sites that we enjoy here are moving more toward an interactive graphical format, making it more content rich. I wonder if this aspect has been weighed among our Admins in terms of keeping DU as content rich as we have grown accustomed over the years.

Bow deeply to you.

Because the other way I learn is kinesthetically so if you take the charts away, frankly, I'm screwn.


As for: content rich. Something is afoot in the Intertubes. All this push toward broadband has not gone without precursors. I'm not sure if you are familiar with Flash, how it is used and the amazing # of sites and applications that utilize it, but it's one of the older (and more compact, quick loading, stable) graphics platforms.

Recently Steve Jobs declared it all but dead, both the tech and the applications. Some disagree.

"Plus there is some stuff that Flash can do that the HTML 5 Video Tag cannot. Mainly – interactivity. Overlays, hot spots, etc. These are things that are built into Flash which will not be ready for HML 5’s launch. Sure, you’ll be able to click the video and go somewhere, but you won’t be able to click say a video overlay menu, a hot spot for a specific product (which is placed there purposely and paying you for it to be there and be clicked) and the like. In fact, the HTML 5 Video Tag could very well be a step backward for online video." from http://www.reelseo.com/flash-obsolete/

The new stuff will get worked out, life will go on, but I feel like there is a piece of info that they are privy to, that we are not....

All that aside. Thanks again for working so hard.

I did a cursory search last night and came up empty. I do love the charts on this thread and refer back to them several times a day, much nicer than listening to the bleat of CNBC or any of the other liar services.

SINGAPORE – Oil prices drifted below $82 a barrel Friday in Asia, pulling back from a monthlong rally that was fueled by mostly positive news about the U.S. economy. ...

Crude jumped to $83 a barrel earlier this week from $69 early last month on expectations sluggish consumer demand will eventually catch up with a steadily improving U.S. economy.

Some analysts say investor concerns that low interest rates and massive government spending could spark inflation will help keep crude prices from a protracted downturn. ....

In other Nymex trading in April contracts, heating oil fell 0.72 cent to $2.112 a gallon, and gasoline was steady at $2.301 a gallon. Natural gas held at $4.084 per 1,000 cubic feet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/oil_prices

Back in the days when US oil demand controlled the price of oil, a massive recession in the United States would have sent oil to 12.00 dollars a barrel. That era, which ended last decade, was defined by ongoing spare capacity in OPEC, low-cost oil in Non-OPEC, and nascent demand for oil in the developing world. That was then, and this is now. And so it’s rather quaint that the energy analysts from that previous era still gather each week on American financial TV, to discuss the inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma. Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma? The US has been removing discretionary demand for oil for years, starting back in 2004. And current unemployment in California is at 13.2%–another new post-war high. Yet oil is at 82.00 dollars? Get these analysts off TV. Please. We need analysis of diesel demand in Guangdong, and Uttar Pradesh.

With the closing out of the decade we also have the full data set, on global crude oil production. As you can see from the chart below (click to enlarge), the twin peaks of oil production in 2005 and 2008 reveal that while the world was able to respond to a moderate price advance coming out of 2002, nearly all of the price action above 40.00 dollars a barrel starting in late 2004 did not produce more supply. Welcome to peak oil: when the world’s remaining supply of oil is more diffuse, of lower grade, harder to extract, and is unable to flow in the aggregate at higher production levels.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/194501-the-u-s-no-longer-controls-the-price-of-oil?source=feed

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He makes a strong case regarding how globalization has changed the structure of price, demand location and production. He overlooks speculation as a driver for prices. That aspect has been glaringly obvious since the days of $150/bbl oil.

and as for the rest of the world demand, it's pretty shaky, too.

WASHINGTON – Slowly but steadily, support is building behind President Barack Obama's health care legislation in the House, the result of intense lobbying and politically targeted changes aimed at reassuring waverers and winning over critics. ...

The White House and Democratic leaders trumpeted two new converts to their cause, as retiring Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., and first-term Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., announced their support after opposing an earlier version of the legislation last year. Markey cited improved deficit cuts. Gordon said his backing was unrelated to a new provision sending higher Medicaid payments to Tennessee hospitals that treat large numbers of uninsured. ...

With the addition of the 153 pages of revisions, the bill would expand health care to 32 million uninsured, bar the insurance industry from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and trim federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion over the next decade.

Beginning in 2014, most Americans would be required for the first time to purchase insurance or face penalties if they refused. Large businesses would face fines if they did not offer good-quality coverage to their workers. Millions of families with incomes up to $88,000 a year would receive government help to defray their costs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100319/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

High-income families would be hit with a tax increase on wages and a new levy on investments under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul bill.

For the first time, the Medicare payroll tax would be applied to investment income, beginning in 2013. A new 3.8 percent tax would be imposed on interest, dividends, capital gains and other investment income for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000.

The bill also would increase the Medicare payroll tax by 0.9 percentage point to 2.35 percent on wages above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.

The new tax on investment income is higher than the 2.9 percent tax proposed by President Barack Obama. House Democratic leaders increased it so they could reduce the impact of a new tax on high-cost health insurance plans strongly opposed by labor unions.

The 40 percent tax on health benefits would be delayed until 2018 and would apply only to premiums exceeding $10,200 a year for individuals and $27,500 for families.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10144820

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Good! That cap on capital gains income at 15% is wholly unfair. I am glad to see this is being addressed with appropriate legislation to chisel away at that wealthyfare provision for people who make their living off trading commodity and equity shares.

and will hit a lot more people a lot closer to home.

This could be the beginning of great upheaval--and those flyweight Tea Baggers will get run over in the process.

I wouldn't give the Democratic Party as constituted even odds.

The GOP is already toast.

The time for change is upon us, ironically brought by a man who sold himself to the corporations and sold us the People down the river, after selling himself as an agent of Hope and Change.

Be careful what you wish for!

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This plan has miserable failure written all over it--and Congress knows it. They don't even try to pretend they are doing something good for the country. It's mocking the voters, in the belief that either we are too stupid or too powerless to make them serve our interests.

They could have passed H.R.676 with a 3.5% tax on employers and employees, covered everyone, eliminated deductibles and co-pays, not to mention premiums, all in one fell swoop.

The pressure to pass this bastard had to be immense. A friend of mine called Kucinich the night that he was with Obama in Ohio, and Dennis assured him that he was a solid "NO" vote. The next day he announced a press conference, and the following day he switched.

Miserable failure is an understatement. They tried to produce a sleek feline, and the design committee came back with a platypus. A disfigured platypus.

....
A British company is betting there's a market in North America for a $200,000 sports car built with Formula One race technology, announcing Thursday that it will unveil the very expensive new toy late next year. ...

For most people, though, the economy's still a clunker. A new Labor Department report said more than 11 million Americans are now getting unemployment benefits.
The number of first-time claims for unemployment fell last week for the third time in a row, a sign the job market is slowly healing. But claims remain above levels that would signal the economy is actually generating new jobs.

There are other signs of the economic split:

• Luxury clothing stores outpaced others last month and brought in more money than expected. At Nordstrom, sales at stores open at least a year surged 10.4
percent. Sales only rose 2.4 percent at Target, and 1.2 percent at J.C. Penney.

• Business at high-end hotels is coming back much faster than at mid-price or budget hotels, says Patrick Scholes, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. Revenue at luxury hotels was up 7.7 percent last week from a year ago. At less fancy hotels, revenue fell.

• While overall U.S. auto sales were up 13 percent for February, luxury brands did even better. Revenue rose 32 percent for General Motors' Cadillac brand, nearly 14 percent for BMW and 17 percent for Honda's Acura. Sales of the Lexus were up 5 percent while overall sales at Toyota fell because of widespread recalls.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100318/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_economy

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I don't know who is writing these people's talking points - but a drop in unemployment claims for the third week in a row is not a stabilizing job market. To me - a stabilizing job market is one that is creating nearly as many jobs as those who enter the work force. Otherwise the levels of job losses, now at 457k for this week, is still catastrophically high.

If they were reporting record profits at these high-end retailers, that might be significant.

And the Brits are operating under a delusion about America, as usual. They only see our looters and pirates, who can afford anything but who should be saving for legal fees and expatriate expenses...

European stocks were led higher by bank shares Friday after Lloyds Banking Group said it expects to return to profit this year.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.2% to 261.6. London's FTSE 100 was 0.4% higher at 5663.1, Frankfurt's DAX rose 0.1% to 6015.0 and Paris's CAC-40 gained 0.2% to 3947.5.

The FTSE got an extra boost from a Credit Suisse note, which upgraded the U.K. equity market to benchmark from underweight in local currency terms, largely due to the play on sterling. ...

Corporate news was otherwise slow Friday, with traders keeping a watchful eye on the Greek debt situation and whether the debt-laden country will eventually have to turn to the International Monetary Fund. Meanwhile, some volatility could be on the cards as options expiries hit the U.S., U.K. and German markets.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904575130991714308422.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

...
After more than six decades as a skeptic of big government, the former Federal Reserve chairman, now 84, is gingerly suggesting that perhaps regulators should help rein in giant financial institutions by requiring them to hold more capital.

Mr. Greenspan, once celebrated as the “maestro” of economic policy, has seen his reputation dim after failing to avert the credit bubble that nearly brought down the financial system. Now, in a 48-page paper that is by turns analytical and apologetic, he is calling for a degree of greater banking regulation in several areas. ...

The report, which he is to present Friday to the Brookings Institution, is by no means a mea culpa. But in his customarily sober language, Mr. Greenspan, who has long argued that the market is often a more effective regulator than the government, has now adopted a more expansive view of the proper role of the state.

He argues that regulators should enforce collateral and capital requirements, limit or ban certain kinds of concentrated bank lending, and even compel financial companies to develop “living wills” that specify how they are to be liquidated in an orderly way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/business/economy/19fed.html?src=me&ref=business

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So he recants, a little, his delusional philosophy. This is not going to save his new reputation and remove his new moniker: The Messtro.

Here’s a laugher: “In a detailed review of the causes of the financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledged a range of regulatory failures but strongly disputed the widely held view that the Fed left interest rates too low for too long.”

Oh, it gets even worse:

“In Mr. Greenspan’s 48-page review of the causes and consequences of the crisis, the text of which was released by Brookings, he acknowledged that the regulatory system failed, that Fed officials didn’t take seriously enough the risks building in the subprime mortgage market last decade, that regulators more broadly didn’t demand that banks hold enough capital and that he didn’t do enough to rein in “megabanks,” that posed a risk to the financial system.

He offered a full-throated defense of the interest-rate policies he championed. Low rates did play a role in spurring a housing bubble last decade, Mr. Greenspan said. But it wasn’t the short-term rates he controlled, he said. It was longer-term rates, which were driven lower by a flood of savings released by emerging markets into the global financial system.

The Fed pushed its benchmark interest rate—the federal-funds rate—to 1% in 2003, to fend off a dangerous bout of deflation. Some critics say this fueled adjustable-rate mortgage borrowing, bank risk-taking and the housing boom.

Mr. Greenspan says rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages drove the housing boom, not the overnight lending rates the Fed controls. Because of the flood of foreign capital, he said, longer-term rates became less closely linked to the federal-funds rate during the boom, something he described at the time as a “conundrum.”"

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/03/open-thread-greenspan-says-not-my-fault/

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Jeebus! The dummy never considered that foreign financial interests (using the carry trade) might use low rates for their own selfish purposes. But really - it (the Fed) failed on all counts mentioned in these four paragraphs. Regulation simply was not on the radar of his lopsided monetarist policies.

straight out of Ayn Rand.

that problems would arise in the mortgage market. Except at a national mayor's meeting in 2007, one of the topics they addressed was the "foreclosure crisis" affecting all their cities. When I heard that I realized it was a national problem, not just local. Around the same time, expert panels on news shows began to discuss how big the foreclosure crisis was becoming. That's when I first heard the term "underwater" mortgages.

"No one could have predicted" has become one of those "opposite cliches" that guarantee the opposite is true, like "I know what I'm doing." Whenever a character in a movie says, "I know what I'm doing," you know the monster will eat him shortly.

how come it was all the sub-prime and Alt-A's that collapsed?

The man is out of his fucking mind, should be put in a home and never allowed out in public. He's an embarrassment. Andrea, take care of him and save us further humiliation!



Tansy Gold

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc.’s Shunji Katayama resigned, taking the number of departures of senior staff to at least 10 this month, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Katayama, a Tokyo-based investment banker, rejoined Nomura after its September 2008 takeover of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. He was co-head of corporate banking at Lehman in Japan, and prior that worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nomura.....

Others to quit were Takashi Masuda, a Nomura syndication banker who left for Goldman, equities analyst Yosuke Tomimatsu, who joined Bank of America Corp., and Moscow-based bankers Maxim Seltzer, Yevhen Zenchenko and Vadim Bondarev people with knowledge of the resignations said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aUxFT7HXu0Co&pos=5

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This sure is interesting. I wonder if they are feeling caught in some legal crossfire.

JPMorgan Chase recorded some repurchase trades as sales, the same accounting gimmick that spawned Lehman Brothers’ now-infamous “Repo 105s”, suggesting that the failed bank was not alone in its interpretation of a new accounting rule.

Unlike Lehman, which never disclosed the effects of its repo deals on the firm’s balance sheet, JPMorgan detailed the year-end values of its repo sales and purchases in annual reports beginning in 2001, after a new accounting rule was introduced. ...

Lehman’s use of repo sales as a means to shrink its balance sheet was revealed last week by Anton Valukas, who was appointed in January 2009 by a US court to determine the causes of what was the largest bankruptcy filing in US history.

Mr Valukas reported that Lehman’s Repo 105 volumes spiked sharply at the end of a quarter as executives tried to shrink the balance sheet to make the bank appear stronger.

Repo trades have long been a vital source of funding for investment banks, and typically remain on the firms’ books. But under certain circumstances banks can account for the trades as a sale and thereby remove them from their books. ...

Unlike a broker-dealer such as Lehman, whose balance sheets were a literal snapshot of its positions at the end of each quarter, a commercial bank like JPMorgan reports average figures, making quarter-end “window-dressing” irrelevant.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d4d734f8-32d6-11df-a767-00144feabdc0.html

So which theory is it: stunning bureaucratic incompetence, wishful thinking and denial (a better gloss on theory #1) or a cover up? Or a combination of the above?

No matter which theory or theories you subscribe to, the continuing revelations of how the SEC and perhaps more important, the New York Fed conducted themselves in the months before Lehman’s collapse paint an increasingly damning picture.

The Valukas report shows both regulators were monitoring Lehman on a day-to-day basis shortly after Bear’s failure. They recognized that it has a massive hole in its balance sheet, yet took an inertial course of action. They pressured a clearly in denial Fuld to raise capital (and Andrew Ross Sorkin’s accounts of those efforts make it clear they were likely to fail) and did not take steps towards any other remedy until the firm was on the brink of collapse (the effort to force a private sector bailout as part of a good bank/bad bank resolution).

One of the possible excuses for the failure to do more was that the officialdom did not recognize how badly impaired Lehman was until too late in the game to do much more than flail about. But that argument is undercut by a story in tonight’s Financial Times. ....

This Financial Times story provides yet more confirmation that Geithner is not fit to serve as a regulator and should resign as Treasury Secretary. But it may take Congress forcing a release of the Lehman-related e-mails and other correspondence by the New York Fed to bring about that outcome.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/sec-fed-alerted-by-merrill-of-lehman-balance-sheet-games-in-march-2008.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0fa840e0-320a-11df-a8d1-00144feabdc0.html

UK financial regulators said they had no reason to question the so-called “accounting gimmick” used by Lehman Brothers to flatter its results because the investment bank’s UK subsidiary’s reports accurately reflected the transactions.

“Any suggestion that this is an FSA supervisory failure reflects a complete misunderstanding of the circumstances,” Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority said on Wednesday in defence of his agency’s oversight of so-called “Repo 105” transactions.

Senior politicians from the opposition Conservative party, which wants to dismantle the FSA if it wins the UK general election later this year, have harshly criticised the regulator for failing to spot the transactions. Repo 105 was denounced as an “accounting gimmick” in last week’s report by the US bankruptcy examiner into Lehman’s collapse. In his report, Anton Valukas said Lehman had exploited a difference between UK and US laws and accounting standards to conduct a growing number of quarter-end balance sheet window dressing operations, which were used to reduce apparent leverage at reporting dates.

By 2008 the bank was conducting about $50bn of these Repo 105 deals at the end of the first and second quarters. It collapsed in September 2008. Lehman conducted the deals in London after it was unable to get a US law firm to agree that the transactions counted as sales in the US. Without that legal cover, the deals would probably have counted as regular repo deals, which must be included in US balance sheet reports.

In the UK, the bank was able to get a legal opinion certifying that the transactions qualified as sales. Lawyers not connected to the transactions said the UK’s definition of sale was slightly less restrictive than the relevant law in the US.

The legal opinion made no difference to the Lehman UK subsidiary’s accounts to the FSA because they were made under UK accounting rules, which require both repos and sales to be reported on the balance sheet, the FSA said. But when the UK accounts were consolidated back to the US, under US accounting standards, known as GAAP, the transactions disappeared off Lehman’s balance sheet, the Valukas report said.

“The balance sheet effect referred to in the Lehman report only occurred in the consolidated accounts which were prepared under US GAAP,” Mr Sants said.

“This is a matter for US financial reporting standards, not ... for UK supervision,” he said. “This is arbitrage between US accounting rules and UK law.”

Barney Frank, chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee, has agreed to hold a hearing into the regulatory failures leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c31e457c-32bc-11df-a767-00144feabdc0.html

Nomura feared that many ex-Lehman bankers were preparing to resign in Europe and Asia

Nomura may have botched the handling of its latest management reshuffle, but in appointing a foreigner to its executive board for the first time, the Japanese bank has clearly affirmed its ambitions to become a global player.

Almost since the day Nomura acquired the European and Asian operations of Lehman Brothers at the height of the financial crisis, analysts have questioned the ability of its predominantly Japanese management to integrate the two cultures.

This week’s surprise decision to appoint Jasjit “Jesse” Bhattal, Lehman’s former head of Asia, to a senior role with oversight of the bank’s global wholesale banking operations is the most promising sign yet that Nomura remains serious about joining the investment banking elite, analysts said.

The reshuffle saw news of Mr Bhattal’s appointment rushed out after Nomura’s senior executive in Europe, Sadeq Sayeed, unexpectedly announced his resignation.

It marks a significant shift from the traditional Japanese system of making personnel decisions on the basis of seniority and other internal human resources factors, insiders said.

The idea to revamp the organisation and appoint Mr Bhattal only started to be seriously discussed this month, amid mounting concerns in Tokyo about the bank’s ability to retain senior ex-Lehman bankers, according to people familiar with the process.

At the time of the banks’ tie-up in September 2008, many of Lehman’s biggest producers were awarded generous two-year pay deals, guaranteeing their bonuses at 2007 boom-time levels.

Those deals, however, have largely expired, with Lehman’s former Asia staff receiving the last of their guaranteed bonuses on March 1. Senior ex-Lehman staff in Europe are due to be paid out on April 1.

The final payments left the Asian executives free to leave, and within days several executives had handed in their notice.

Among them were Siggi Thorkelsson, head of equities in Asia, and Thomas Siegmund, co-head of fixed-income in the region.

“There were many more ex-Lehman bankers who were preparing to resign in Asia and Europe,” said one Nomura insider. “Tokyo was aware of it and was worried that the trickle would turn in to a flood.”

In his seven years based in Tokyo as head of Lehman’s Asian operations, Mr Bhattal developed relationships with Nomura’s top brass, including Kenichi Watanabe, president, and Takumi Shibata, deputy president.

But he was not handed any executive responsibility after helping to transfer his 3,000 regional staff to Nomura, and had planned to quit the Japanese bank this month.

Anxious that a sudden exodus of ex-Lehman talent would damage its global strategy, Nomura executives approached the India-born, Oxford-educated banker about taking on responsibility for a new wholesale banking unit that includes investment banking, equities trading and other non-retail activities.

“What has happened at Nomura these past few days is nothing short of a revolution,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Jesse has basically been handed the keys to the kingdom.”

Mr Bhattal’s gung-ho leadership style elicits fierce loyalty from his staff, many of whom this week in Asia warmly welcomed news of his appointment.

His elevation is expected to lead to the resurrection in senior positions of many of the ex-Lehman executives who were sidelined after the takeover.

Brian O’Connor, Mr Bhattal’s right-hand-man at Lehman Asia, is among those tipped to return in a senior role.

In Europe, where some executives saw the hard-charging Mr Sayeed as a polarising figure, the changes have also been welcomed as a fresh opportunity to build credibility.

Strongly opposed to Mr Bhattal’s appointment, Mr Sayeed had no choice but to announce his departure after more than a decade with Nomura, insiders said.

Mr Bhattal is due to meet senior staff in London on Saturday to set out his vision for the role.

The changes are not without considerable risks, and could still trigger a backlash among the Tokyo old guard.

Building out the investment banking operations to establish scale and credibility – especially in the US where its presence is limited – will be expensive and time-consuming.

Nomura is spending $2.5bn to build its operations in the US, where it lost out to Barclays Capital in the battle to acquire Lehman’s operations.

Many bankers formerly connected to Lehman in Asia have already been approached to gauge whether they would return.

One told the Financial Times: “I love Jesse and it is tempting to consider a return. But then after the glow fades you start to think whether to leave for a firm which lacks a US platform.”

Analysts expect Nomura to concentrate initially on its equities and fixed income activities in Asia, given the relatively quicker gains that can be achieved compared with merger advisory and capital markets work.

I will check in as the day allows.

:hi:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3943e114-327f-11df-bf20-00144feabdc0.html

Germany is leaning towards involving the International Monetary Fund should Greece call for help to stem its budget crisis, a move Berlin hopes would help avoid potential constitutional court objections to a German bail-out.

With the euro under pressure on the currency markets, and fresh concerns about delays in agreeing on any purely European rescue package, Germany’s shift makes an IMF-led programme far more likely. Hitherto, Berlin has shared widespread EU hostility towards any involvement of the fund, fearing that such a move would demonstrate Europe’s inability to regulate its own economic and monetary union.

In talks between eurozone members, the German government has been hamstrung by its concern that signing up to official plans to help Greece would violate a “no bail-out” clause in EU rules on the euro and expose it to legal challenges before Germany’s highest court, officials said...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a877495a-31f2-11df-a8d1-00144feabdc0.html

German investors in the world’s biggest observation wheel face large potential losses after a creditor seized control of the project in Beijing – a rotating viewing platform designed to trump the London Eye.

Around 10,000 retail clients of Delbrück Bethmann Maffei Fonds Invest, the closed-funds division of ABN Amro’s German private banking business, have been left fearing for their investment in a €208m ($286m) fund called Global View.

DBM Fonds Invest created the fund in 2006 to help finance big wheel projects in Beijing, Berlin and Orlando, Florida but none has yet been completed.

Hundreds of investors – each of whom parted with at least €10,000 to buy an equity share in the wheels’ profits – are now seeking compensation, claiming that they were not properly advised of the risks by distributors of the fund, who include Deutsche Bank.

Katja Fohrer, of Mattil & Partners in Munich, which represents about 100 Global View investors, questions whether advisers properly examined the plausibility of the Chinese wheel before pitching the investment to customers.

...The fund’s creators hoped to capitalise on the success of the London Eye, which since 2000 has welcomed around 36m guests, becoming a familiar feature of the capital’s skyline. The ease with which the London Eye charges adult visitors more than £17 for a 30-minute ride has spawned a host of imitators in cities around the world.

But four years later, local project companies in Beijing, Berlin and Orlando have spent around €180m in Global View investors’ equity, without completing a single wheel. “The fund is experiencing big difficulties, there’s no doubt,” said Christian Harreiner, managing director of DBM Fonds Invest. After months of negotiations Bavaria’s HypoVereinsbank, which provided project financing for the Beijing wheel, finally lost patience. In January HVB terminated its loan and called in an administrator.

In a letter obtained by the Financial Times, DBM Fonds Invest warned investors that in the worse case scenario they faced a “complete writedown” of their €80m investment in the Beijing holding company.

This observation wheel was supposed to be the cream of the crop, rising more than 200m above Chaoyang Park and opening in time for the 2008 Olympic Games. But difficulties in gaining permits from Chinese authorities delayed the project, meaning only the concrete foundation has so far been built.

In the absence of ticket receipts, there was no money to repay creditors or fund dividends. Meanwhile, when the financial crisis struck it became impossible for project companies in Orlando and Berlin to obtain financing.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1d838db2-31c6-11df-9ef5-00144feabdc0.html

Four banks were charged with fraud on Wednesday for their roles in a €1.7bn ($2.3bn) financing package for the Italian city of Milan in a case that will fuel the global debate about the use of complex derivatives.

UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Germany’s Depfa will face trial in Milan after a judge ruled there was sufficient evidence for them to face criminal charges of aggravated fraud for their role in devising a swaps package for the city’s 2005 bond issue.

... Italian local governments borrowed some €35bn in swap-related transactions between 2001 and 2008. The Bank of Italy estimates they could now be facing losses of €1bn.

Dario Loiacono, a Milan lawyer, said on Wednesday: “It is clear that the municipalities did not understand the risks and costs they were taking on. This case will clarify who has responsibility for that.”

Alfredo Robledo, the prosecutor who has been investigating the circumstances of Milan’s 2005 bond issue, said the trial would be the first time a criminal case was brought against banks for their role in issuing derivatives to local authorities. “This is a step in a process, it is a delicate stage,” he said.

Eleven bankers and two municipal employees face similar charges to the banks and will also stand trial in the fraud case, scheduled to begin on May 6. The four banks said neither they nor their employees had done anything wrong.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d59b36c4-32bc-11df-a767-00144feabdc0.html

UBS on Thursday laid the ground for potential conflict with shareholders at next month’s annual meeting after the Swiss bank said it would seek a formal discharge for board members and senior executives who had been in charge during the credit crisis.

A formal vote of confidence in management had been put off for two years because UBS argued it was inappropriate while internal and external investigations into responsibility for the group’s massive losses were under way.

Since the credit crisis, UBS has taken write-offs of more than $50bn.

Those investigations, including a critical study by the Swiss bank regulator, have now ended. A separate appraisal by the bank’s board, which is now largely comprised of newcomers, has concluded there are no grounds for legal action against former bosses.

The ending of the probes means there are no longer any impediments to a formal vote of confidence in the bank’s former top managers. Because of the previous postponements, the votes will not just apply to the past financial year, but also to 2007 and 2008.

That means shareholders will be able to express their feelings about Marcel Ospel, the former UBS chairman widely viewed as the architect of the bank’s push into fixed income trading, and Peter Wuffli and Marcel Rohner, two previous chief executives.

The vote will also cover Peter Kurer, the bank’s former general counsel who took over from Mr Ospel in 2008 and served as chairman for one year, as well as Kaspar Villiger and Oswald Grübel, the current chairman and chief executive, both appointed in 2009.

Although incumbents are usually approved with big majorities, analysts said there was a strong chance that shareholders could use the vote to inflict a massive embarrassment on the bank’s former leaders. Lawyers said failure to secure discharge could leave those concerned liable to legal action in certain cases.

Ethos, the Swiss activist investor regularly at the forefront of demands for executive accountability at UBS, said it was assessing the meeting’s agenda.

Small shareholders, mostly furious about UBS’s losses and the collapse of its share price in recent years, are likely to use the vote to vent their ire. But there will be big institutions which might decide to back the vote of confidence on the basis that UBS needs to look forward.

The bank also announced Michel Demaré, chief financial officer of ABB and a board member since last year, would be up for appointment as deputy chairman.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af1268ca-304a-11df-8734-00144feabdc0.html

More than 100 members of the US Congress on Monday called on the Obama administration to label China a currency manipulator, in a move that highlighted the pressure on Washington to take a more confrontational stance towards Beijing.

In a letter to Timothy Geithner, Treasury secretary, and Gary Locke, commerce secretary, the 130 Congressmen demanded the administration designate China a manipulator when it issues its regular report on currency manipulation next month. They called for countervailing duties to be imposed on Chinese imports.

“I have not really seen this level of enthusiasm among members of Congress before,” said Tim Ryan,(D-OH) one of the Congressmen organising the bipartisan letter. “There is a heck of a coalition behind this and the time is right.”

The letter adds to pressure on the Obama administration, which is trying carefully to manage its relationship with China, one of the largest buyers of US government debt, amid fears a rift could unnerve investors and undermine recovery.

The Obama administration has been reluctant to designate China a currency manipulator at a time when figures including Mr Geithner have sought to work with Beijing. The US has looked for support from China on a range of issues from climate change to United Nations sanctions on Iran. But, with US unemployment at nearly 10 per cent, the administration has also identified the alleged undervaluation of the renminbi as a top priority. Calls from the Democratic party’s base for a tougher line have intensified.

“It’s politically important for Democrats obviously but there are also many Republicans and small business owners that would benefit from this,” said Mr Ryan, who hailed Mr Obama for having taken “a more aggressive approach on enforcing our trade agreements than any president has for 30 years”.

The letter adds that, after a formal designation, the US should begin talks with China on its foreign exchange regime and signal its willingness to enter a formal complaint at the World Trade Organisation.

“This is very risky. On both the Chinese and the US sides the leadership feels that you have to keep the relationship on an even keel, but with domestic feelings running high there is a risk that it gets out of control,” said Eswar Prasad, an expert at Cornell University and the Brookings Institution.

“There is a consensus building in the US that China’s position on the currency is untenable and that China is throwing its weight around in a way that is unfriendly,” he added. ”The perception in China is that the dynamic in the bilateral relationship has shifted completely to Beijing’s advantage.”

In a letter last month 15 US Senators criticised Mr Locke for having “failed” to adequately investigate charges that China deliberately undervalued its currency for trade advantages while a number of members of Congress have introduced legislation to label Beijing a manipulator.

The US Treasury declined to comment on the latest call. The last time it designated a country as having manipulated its currency was in 1994, when it identified China as having done so.

Since then trade between the two countries has risen enormously, with Chinese exports to the US reaching $296bn in 2009 and imports hitting $70bn. Mr Prasad adds that China holds about 10 per cent of the total US outstanding government debt of $7,800bn.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/560e9992-30cc-11df-b057-00144feabdc0.html

China called on US multinationals (AN OXYMORON IF THERE EVER WAS ONE) on Tuesday to lobby the Obama administration against taking protectionist measures over the Chinese currency, just as attitudes towards China appear to be hardening in the US ­Congress.

Yao Jian, a spokesman at the Chinese commerce ministry, said that some companies had already been lobbying against recent restrictions on Chinese imports to the US and he hoped this would increase.

“We hope that US companies in China will express their demands and point of views in the US, in order to promote the development of global trade and jointly oppose trade protectionism,” he said.

The comments came as the political heat surrounding China’s currency policy intensified in Washington. Led by Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, a group of senators said China’s refusal to let its currency appreciate was damaging the US economic recovery and hurting American competitiveness.

“China’s currency manipulation would be unacceptable even in good economic times. At a time of 10 per cent unemployment, we will simply not stand for it,” Mr Schumer said.

The senators have proposed a bill that would require the Treasury to identify countries with “fundamentally misaligned currencies” as well as those that need to be tackled with “priority action”.

Those countries would have nearly a year to adjust the value of their currency before the US administration was required to bring a case against them at the World Trade Organisation, according to the proposal. The Treasury would also have to “consult” the Federal Reserve and other central banks about “remedial intervention in currency markets”.

Expecting an appreciationSome measures could be taken earlier, including forbidding Chinese companies from participating in US government contracts, requesting an International Monetary Fund consultation with China, and including currency undervaluation as part of dumping calculations. Mr Schumer and Mr Graham have been leading the charge in Congress against China’s currency policy for several years, and have periodically presented similar proposals.

But their efforts may have gained fresh impetus on the back of a recent flare-up in tensions between Beijing and Washington on issues including currency.

On Sunday, Wen Jiabao, Chinese premier, warned other countries that pressing China on currency policy amounted to protectionism and insisted the renminbi was not undervalued.

“That was the last straw,” said Mr Schumer, who complained that the US had been “lectured”. “We are fed up, and we are not going to take it any more.”

On April 15, the Treasury will release its latest semi-annual currency report, and pressure is building on the administration to describe China formally as a “manipulator” – a move that it has resisted until now even though President Barack Obama was sharply critical of its currency regime during the 2008 election campaign.

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, said in an interview with Fox Business News on Tuesday: “I think ultimately is going to decide over time it’s in their interest to move to a more flexible exchange rate.” He said the Schumer bill was “an illustration of how strong people feel about this, and it’s understandable and it’s true in countries round the world”.

A Treasury official said: “A more market-oriented Chinese exchange rate will make an essential contribution to a stronger, more balanced global economy.”

US multinationals operating in China have long been opposed to Washington taking action over the perceived undervaluation.

“A 10-15 per cent appreciation of the renminbi would have a very modest effect on the margins of the US current account deficit,” Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management and a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School, told the Financial Times. “The US needs to stay quiet. Hopefully, it won’t name China a currency manipulator.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7abe5714-31f3-11df-a8d1-00144feabdc0.html

The New York Times has signed a deal to supplement its news gathering with news and blog links from 160 cities in six countries, in a move that makes some attempt to tackle the problem of funding local news operations.

The NY Times and its related properties can begin offering news links and excerpts from a network of news sources from Fwix, a news aggregator start-up, which bills itself as a local online newswire.

About 60 per cent of Fwix’s content comes from local internet bloggers, interspersed with news items from mainstream organisations.

The deal is a low-cost means to solve a problem that has vexed news organisations for decades.

“How do we create something that’s neighbourhood and not have a reporter on every street corner?” said Bernard Gershon, a veteran of ABCNews.com and an adviser to the year-and-a-half-old start-up.

With editorial budgets constrained at newspapers, which are wracked by rounds of job cuts, publishers are turning to cheaper technology solutions, said Ken Doctor, a media analyst and author of Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get.

Fwix’s distribution deal will help the Times and its related titles supplement traditional news coverage and cover local regions of the US and other countries, including the UK and New Zealand, more deeply.

The NY Times has already formed partnerships with universities in New York and non-profit news organisations in San Francisco and Chicago to add to its news gathering resources. Fwix was founded in 2008 by Darian Shirazi, a 23-year-old former software engineer at Facebook and Ebay.

The company is backed by $2.5m in funding from BlueRun Ventures, an early investor in PayPal, the online payment system. AOL, the online portal, has earmarked $50m to expand its Patch local news business. Unlike Patch, which employs a small team of regional journalists to provide content, Fwix uses software to sift through existing content sources and an editor, who vets the sources for quality.

Local advertising across print, broadcast and cable networks is expected to rise moderately by 2.2 per cent on a compound annual basis to $144.9bn by 2014, according to BIA/Kelsey, a local media consultancy. But online local ads are set to grow by 19.3 per cent to $36.7bn in the same period.

“Local is hot for these news companies,” Mr Shirazi said. “The only way to do that is through good local content.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ac11136-321f-11df-b4e2-00144feabdc0.html

Gambling regulators in New Jersey on Wednesday reached a deal for MGM Mirage to step away from its Atlantic City interests after the casino group declined to sever its connections to Stanley Ho, the king of the Macao gambling industry, who they allege has ties to organised crime.

MGM Mirage, the Las Vegas-based casino operator, has a joint venture with Pansy Ho, Mr Ho’s daughter, in Macao. New Jersey’s division of gaming enforcement investigated these ties and, in a report last May, found Ms Ho to be an “unsuitable” business partner because of her father’s alleged corruption.

Details of the investigation emerged on Wednesday as part of the settlement in which the regulator offered MGM Mirage the choice of severing its ties to Ms Ho and staying in Atlantic City. The company, however, opted to leave the struggling east coast gambling resort by selling its 50 per cent stake in the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa...

Mr Murren argued that New Jersey’s ruling was unwarranted because regulators in other gambling jurisdictions have had no problem with the company’s ties to Ms Ho. In 2007 Las Vegas regulators found Ms Ho to be a suitable business partner.

Mr Ho, who is nearly 90 and has 17 children by four wives, has dominated Asia’s casino capital for 40 years. He has never been convicted but the New Jersey probe cites investigators who claim to have found evidence of his connections to organised crime, including money laundering, loan sharking and prostitution.

Ms Ho, the investigation found, cannot be considered independent of him because she continues to rely on him financially.

“Apart from her financial, professional and personal dependence upon her father, Pansy Ho’s relationships with several other individuals who are known or alleged to be associated with organised crime independently call into question her personal suitability and MGM’s business association with her,” the investigation report said.

MGM Mirage was aware of the risks it was taking and of the Ho families crime ties, according to the investigation.

It cites testimony from Terry Lanni, the company’s former chief executive, from 1986 saying that Stanley Ho was someone that MGM Mirage would never do business with as US regulators would not condone it.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50c71712-312a-11df-8e6f-00144feabdc0.html

A former Merrill Lynch proprietary trader has been banned from working in UK financial services for at least five years for “mismarking” his trading positions amid the financial crisis in actions that ultimately cost his employer $456m.

Alexis Stenfors was suspended in February 2009 after admitting he had “deliberately overvalued” his positions by $100m between mid-January and mid-February, the Financial Services Authority said on Tuesday.

Mr Stenfors, who had worked at Merrill since 1995 and was formerly head of trading in Scandinavian interest rate derivatives, was dismissed last June and has now been banned from working with clients or in a top executive position at a UK financial company. However, the regulator said it would consider reinstating him in five years because he co-operated with their investigation and expressed remorse.

The currency trader was not fined. The FSA did not have the power to impose one, due to a regulatory loophole that it has tried to close. Until recently, proprietary traders were not considered “approved persons” because they did not handle client money, so they were not subject to FSA fines.

But when the FSA proposed extending its authority to all “prop” traders in 2008, it learned it could only apply its rules to those who exerted “significant influence” over a company – a term that generally means they can affect its overall profitability. In practice that means some prop traders at very large groups are not covered. Mr Stenfors’ case was complicated by cross-border rules. Though he worked in London’s City district, he was trading for a branch of an Irish Merrill Lynch subsidiary, so the FSA had no power to discipline the group.

The Irish financial regulator has already fined Merrill Lynch €2.7m ($3.7m) for the Stenfors episode and a second mismarking incident. The Irish authority said it did not have the power to take action against Mr Stenfors personally because he worked at the London branch.

Mr Stenfors’ attorney, Ian Ryan, said his client received no personal gain from his actions. “It was completely out of character. It was extraordinary market conditions, he hadn’t had a holiday in a year-and-a-half and he was working 18-hour days,” he said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c56729a-31b1-11df-9ef5-00144feabdc0.html

Angela Merkel challenged Gordon Brown on Wednesday to drop his objections to European regulation of the hedge fund and private equity industry.

The German chancellor called for greater progress in agreeing new financial regulations at an international level, and singled out UK opposition to the proposed European Union hedge fund directive.

“I work well with Gordon Brown,” she told the Bundestag. “But his once-off tax on bonuses is only half as good an idea as the hedge fund rules we are considering, and which Great Britain ought to approve. That is what we must fight for, and I am expecting some support.”...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3bd85468-321c-11df-b4e2-00144feabdc0.html

The US government will share classified information with the private sector operators of “critical infrastructure” under the terms of a proposed cybersecurity bill in Congress that has bipartisan support.

The bill was unveiled by two senators amid heightened concern in Washington that the US is ill equipped to deal with the growing threat of cybercrime and state-sponsored “intrusions” into US government and communications networks.

If passed, the legislation would enhance collaboration between US intelligence agencies and the private sector. First, it would require the White House to designate certain technology systems as critical if their disruption threatened strategic national interests. If intelligence officials received information about a forthcoming attack targeting a specific company or critical part of the US infrastructure, a top-level private sector official with security clearance would be provided with “enough” information to defend or mitigate the attack, a congressional aide said.

The threat to critical infrastructure has become a flashpoint in the broadening debate about overall cybersecurity issues. More than 85 per cent of infrastructure that is deemed to be critical is owned or operated by the private sector.

Congressional witnesses have testified that the large segments of the US electrical power grid, already subjected to espionage efforts, could be rendered inoperable through documented vulnerabilities in equipment that is increasingly connected to outside communications networks.

As with the internet and telecommunications infrastructure, a stumbling block has been the private ownership of the majority of potential targets. Though security experts have for years called for greater “public-private” partnership to deal with potential cybersecurity threats, there has been little tangible progress on the security front.

Richard Schaeffer, the National Security Agency’s point man for protecting private assets, indicated on Wednesday that some progress had been made, however.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who would disagree that critical infrastructure is at risk,” Mr Schaeffer said at a Stanford University forum on cybersecurity. The US government, especially intelligence agencies, had a responsibility to tell private owners of utilities what the threats were and set expectations for them to respond with increased security. The process to date was not moving fast enough, he suggested.

“Our challenge is how fast do we need to go, what level of regulation. We’re not having that discussion.”

Among other things, US leaders believe they have to overcome resistance to closer ties between intelligence agencies and the private sector. Such ties have triggered uproar in the past, as with AT&T’s co- operation with warrantless surveillance.

The sponsors of the legislation, Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe, on Wednesday said the legislative proposal would not give the president any new authority.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/916208fc-31fe-11df-a8d1-00144feabdc0.html

India is facing demands from the local state-owned oil industry to create the country’s first sovereign wealth fund to compete with China in the race to secure global energy assets, according to government and industry officials.

The discussions under way between the oil and finance ministries to set up a sovereign investment fund were at an early stage, the officials said, and no deadline had been set.

The plan, if adopted, would repudiate an initiative pushed by New Delhi in 2006 for India to join forces with China in bidding on global energy projects to keep costs down.

India’s oil ministry and state-owned energy groups have told the government that funds from the country’s $278bn of foreign exchange reserves would better equip them to compete with Chinese energy groups that have spent heavily offshore.

R S  Sharma, chairman of India’s state-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Corp, said creation of a sovereign wealth fund would boost India’s ability to secure energy deals offshore. He told the Financial Times: “ would be very good for India’s energy sector as it would help us expand our energy resources capacity. It would help us boost production and ... meet the country’s energy needs.”

India currently imports about 75 per cent of its crude oil requirements, according to Murli Deora, the country’s oil and gas minister. The south Asian country imports more than 2m barrels of oil per day (bpd) and produces 700,000 bpd itself.

Last year, Chinese companies spent more than $30bn snapping up assets around the globe, partly thanks to the backing of state financing, including the China Investment Corp, the country’s $300bn-sovereign fund.

Chinese state-owned energy groups, such as PetroChina, the world biggest oil group by market value, have also been building their own reserves to fund offshore deals independently of CIC. In the same period, India’s ONGC took a 20 per cent stake in Russia’s Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project and bought Imperial Energy, a London-listed group with assets in Russia, for $2.1bn.

Last week, ONGC started talks with Gazprom and Rosneft over taking stakes in projects in Russia. It has also been seeking to expand its investments in Africa by developing oilfields in Angola, Nigeria and Sudan.

“India has a lot to learn from China when it comes to acquiring energy assets abroad,” said Arvind Mahajan, head of natural resources at KPMG in Mumbai. “Although India’s foreign exchange reserves are much smaller than China’s, it has enough funds to help Indian companies finance significant operations internationally.”

(Up a tiny bit. Debt seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat. Good day all.)

= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 8,153,201,235,570.92 + 4,486,578,243,070.97
UP 318,864,879.69 + DOWN 4,240,788,767.35

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 309-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.24 each THAT'S 1B$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.71, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 10 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 309,005,598 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 11/07/2009 08:19 -> 307,879,272
Currently, each of these Americans owe $40,904.69.
A family of three owes $122,714.08. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 21 reports in the last 30 to 28 days.
The average for the last 21 reports is 12,061,140,131.41.
The average for the last 30 days would be 8,442,798,091.99.
The average for the last 28 days would be 9,045,855,098.56.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 114 reports in 168 days of FY2010 averaging 6.40B$ per report, 4.34B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 1,040 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 14.1 and 22.0T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
03/17/2010 12,639,779,478,641.89 BHO (UP 2,012,902,429,728.81 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +0,729,950,475,130.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof10 +1,585,904,306,086.23 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Linear Projection

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
02/25/2010 +034,823,775,896.06 ------------**********
02/26/2010 +007,974,774,874.74 ------------*********
03/01/2010 +088,256,071,194.67 ------------********** Mon
03/02/2010 +000,051,419,206.42 ------------*******
03/03/2010 +001,678,102,940.09 ------------*********
03/04/2010 +034,416,128,156.63 ------------**********
03/05/2010 -000,074,542,156.87 ----
03/08/2010 +000,260,238,586.47 ------------******** Mon
03/09/2010 +000,542,827,835.74 ------------********
03/10/2010 +000,295,703,179.30 ------------********
03/11/2010 +029,692,666,288.30 ------------**********
03/12/2010 +000,363,901,611.09 ------------********
03/15/2010 +060,487,338,970.60 ------------********** Mon
03/16/2010 +000,241,513,784.66 ------------********
03/17/2010 +000,318,864,879.69 ------------********

259,328,785,247.59 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4310879&mesg_id=4310919

(Up plenty for a day. Good day all.)
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 8,174,187,796,569.78 + 4,487,108,259,737.47
UP 20,986,560,998.86 + UP 530,016,666.50

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 309-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.24 each THAT'S 1B$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.71, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 10 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 309,014,238 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 11/07/2009 08:19 -> 307,879,272
Currently, each of these Americans owe $40,973.18.
A family of three owes $122,919.54. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 21 reports in the last 30 to 28 days.
The average for the last 21 reports is 12,373,685,214.23.
The average for the last 30 days would be 8,661,579,649.96.
The average for the last 28 days would be 9,280,263,910.67.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 115 reports in 169 days of FY2010 averaging 6.53B$ per report, 4.45B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 1,039 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 14.1 and 22.3T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
03/18/2010 12,661,296,056,307.25 BHO (UP 2,034,419,007,394.17 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +0,751,467,052,795.50 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof10 +1,622,990,972,013.95 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Linear Projection

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
02/26/2010 +007,974,774,874.74 ------------*********
03/01/2010 +088,256,071,194.67 ------------********** Mon
03/02/2010 +000,051,419,206.42 ------------*******
03/03/2010 +001,678,102,940.09 ------------*********
03/04/2010 +034,416,128,156.63 ------------**********
03/05/2010 -000,074,542,156.87 ----
03/08/2010 +000,260,238,586.47 ------------******** Mon
03/09/2010 +000,542,827,835.74 ------------********
03/10/2010 +000,295,703,179.30 ------------********
03/11/2010 +029,692,666,288.30 ------------**********
03/12/2010 +000,363,901,611.09 ------------********
03/15/2010 +060,487,338,970.60 ------------********** Mon
03/16/2010 +000,241,513,784.66 ------------********
03/17/2010 +000,318,864,879.69 ------------********
03/18/2010 +020,986,560,998.86 ------------**********

245,491,570,350.39 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4312145&mesg_id=4312267

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-18/yuan-poised-to-become-reserve-currency-goldman-s-o-neill-says.html

China is likely to overtake Japan as the world’s second- largest economy this year, said O’Neill, who coined the term BRICs to describe Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2001. In the next decade, along with other large emerging, the size of China’s economy will approach that of the U.S., he wrote.

I doubt that China wants the job, though. After seeing how easy it is for them to slap us around, they don't want to don the bullseye.

3/19/10 Federal Reserve Must Disclose Bank Bailout Records

The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today that the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched primarily after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The ruling upholds a decision of a lower-court judge, who in August ordered that the information be released.

The Fed had argued that it could withhold the information under an exemption that allows federal agencies to refuse disclosure of “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential.”

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, “sets forth no basis for the exemption the Board asks us to read into it,” U.S. Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote in the opinion. “If the Board believes such an exemption would better serve the national interest, it should ask Congress to amend the statute.”

The opinion may not be the final word in the bid for the documents, which was launched by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, with a November 2008 lawsuit. The Fed may seek a rehearing or appeal to the full appeals court and eventually petition the U.S. Supreme Court.

more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2rzjENZQV5k

3/19/10 In Prior Week Money Markets Recorded Biggest Outflow Since Collapse Of Lehman At $60 Billion, Or 2.2% Of Assets

Well, the administration finally succeeded in getting everyone to join it in going all in on the Ponzi. In the prior week, money market funds record a humongous $60 billion outflow, or a whopping 2.2% of all assets. This follows a $30 billion outflow in the prior week, and is the single biggest outflow since the fall of Lehman ($144 Billion, when money markets needed a Federal guarantee to be saved). Joe Sixpack has thrown the dice and its has fallen on pyramid scheme.



more...
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/prior-week-money-markets-record-biggest-outflow-collapse-lehman-60-billion-or-22-assets

And new rules going into effect, that they can deny withdrawals for a while?

It is the SEC that ruled Money Market Mutual Funds could have withdrawals denied, and maybe SEC (or FDIC) that gave permission to let insurance coverage on MMF to expire (see below).


1/27/10 Suspending Money Market Redemptions Is Now Legal; SEC Approves New Money Market Regulation In 4-1 Vote
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/suspending-money-market-redemptions-now-legel-sec-approves-new-money-market-regulation-4-1-v


Edit: It was the Treasury that temporary guaranteed the MMF
http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/hp1161.htm

9/18/09 program expired
http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/tg293.htm

Advanta Bank Corp.
Century Security Bank
American National Bank

more...
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html